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Long-time readers of ERV know that I am not a fan of Pre-Exposure Prophylactics as a regular means of preventing HIV infection. In tightly controlled clinical trials, giving people who might be exposed to HIV anti-HIV drugs does lower infection rates… but when the same protocol is let loose ‘out in the wild’, the results…

You all might have heard about ‘delta32′ or ‘delta-CCR5′ people in association with HIV infection. People who naturally, by chance, have deletions and mutations in the CCR5 gene of their DNA dont make functional CCR5 proteins. It doesnt appear to be ‘a big deal’, and people who have this particular mutation seem to live normal…

I have known about this for a while, and have been debating whether or not I should say anything. I really dont want to give the disgraces responsible for the XMRV–>CFS fiasco, Judy Mikovits, Frank Ruscetti, and Sandra Ruscetti, any more attention. What turned my opinion was something T.R. Gregory said yesterday: I don’t *believe*…

Fun! I like this new idea! Targeted Cytotoxic Therapy Kills Persisting HIV Infected Cells During ART I havent talked about ‘scFv’ on ERV yet, but theyre very handy tools scientists are taking advantage of more and more these days. ‘scFv’s are single-chain variable fragments… not an overly useful name, but what they are are basically…

More HIV news! HIVs ancestor, SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), has been around a LOT longer than we previously thought. As I have mentioned before, we always assumed retroviruses like HIV, lentiviruses, are evolutionarily ‘young’. They are relatively complex, so probably ‘newish’ in retrovirus-world, but they do not fossilize well (we have found very few lentiviral…

Holy crap the HIV news last week! So much HIV news! First on the list: Early Treatment Is Found to Clear H.I.V. in a 2nd Baby Just in case you have forgotten, the first baby. What happened to ‘the baby cured of HIV’? Now, the second baby– I must emphasize that I only know what…

It is frustrating being a scientist in a political climate that is not supportive of science. But what we have to put up with in the US pales in comparison with something happening right now in Egypt: More from CNN: Egyptian army’s AIDS-cure claim gets harsh criticism Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti is apparently a total…

WHY IS THIS NOT STANDARD THERAPY YET? Efficacy and Toxicity Management of 19-28z CAR T Cell Therapy in B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia I wrote about this last year: ‘Dismal prognosis’ with leukemia? Nothing a GMO virus cant fix. In the previous study, scientists took cytotoxic T-cells from five B-ALL patients, and infected them with…

Long-term safety and tolerability of ProSavin, a lentiviral vector-based gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease: a dose escalation, open-label, phase 1/2 trial 1. Start with HIV-1s ‘country cousin‘, Equine Infectious Anemia Virus (EIAV). EIAV is a lentivirus, like HIV, so it is a good gene therapy virus. Lentiviruses are a bit more trustworthy than the gamma retroviruses…

YouTuber MylesPowers1985 has got an in-depth analysis of the HIV Denier movie, ‘House Of Numbers’, going. Of the episodes I saw, it is really good. Its not the usual boring ‘person talking to a camera’ video– it is serious investigative journalism. I say ‘of the episodes I saw’ because MylesPowers1985s videos are being taken down by…